


Still

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Domestic, F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 14:18:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17102183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: Carolina has never known, really, how to stop moving. But she's still here.





	Still

**Author's Note:**

> Hello it's December have some post-war fluff.

The apartment is quiet when Carolina comes in, nudging the door shut with one hip and balancing on one foot and then the other to unlace her running shoes with quick fingers. There’s something about this time of the morning—a slant of light through the front window, maybe, a warmth to the silence she can’t quite explain, but one that wraps around her and settles gentle on her skin, herself still warm from her run. She sets her shoes down softly, so as not to disturb the quiet, or Vanessa in the living room.

Vanessa is sitting. Legs crossed, hands in mudra on her knees, eyes closed. She has heard Carolina come in, and that small piece of knowledge is set aside somewhere in the back of her mind, but she maintains her posture, maintains her breath, which Carolina can hear when she holds still and listens. That’s the discipline, Vanessa’s explained to her—whatever happens, whatever thoughts come through your mind, you continue to sit. You don’t let yourself be tossed away.

Carolina can’t imagine making that work for her—she’s tried, a few times, but sitting silent with nothing but her breathing and the noise of her own mind tends to make her want to scream in under a minute. Vanessa talks about quieting the mind. Sitting only seems to make hers louder.

But she gets it, in another way, the discipline part, because that’s like running, like training—where you keep pushing through the resistance, breathing, embracing the burn in your muscles until you hit the flow. There are days when you don’t, and Vanessa says there are days she doesn’t attain quiet in her head either. But you keep running. You continue to sit. In that way, it makes sense.

It makes sense in the way _they_ make sense, somehow, all these months after the war and as different as they are. Though Carolina’s had to fight it sometimes, that impulse to run, because she’s never known, really, how to stop moving. But she’s still here.

Carolina pads quietly past Vanessa to the kitchen and starts up the electric kettle. She’ll get a quick shower, and by the time she’s done the water will be held on the boil, ready for her French press coffee and Vanessa’s tea.

She showers quickly. More noise, she thinks, the sound of the spray, and in the kitchen the hiss of the water heating in the kettle. And Vanessa still sitting, absorbing the sounds of their morning, keeping silence with them.

And when she emerges, her skin still warm from the shower and the run, fastening her bra while she walks with a t-shirt tucked under one arm, Vanessa’s eyes open and she smiles. “Morning.”

Carolina smiles back, and wriggles into her t-shirt. The water’s on the boil, she can hear it now. “Morning.”

Vanessa follows her to the kitchen, and Carolina grinds coffee for her little two-cup press and Vanessa spoons loose black leaves into her tea ball, pours, and passes the kettle to Carolina, and sets a timer for four minutes. And in those four minutes Vanessa slips her arms around Carolina’s waist from behind and smiles into her shoulder. Carolina weaves her fingers between Vanessa’s, turns her head to feel Vanessa’s cheek soft against hers, the warmth of her breath and the brush of her lips and her presence that feels, more and more, like steadiness and calm.

And for a moment, Carolina knows how be still.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
